The Logical Sherlock for Our Time

“Sherlock” is returning to PBS on Sunday for a third season, and for those who haven’t watched it, it is worth starting now, and even catching up with the first two seasons (at PBS.org or Netflix.)

It would be unfair to say that this BBC production is the best Sherlock Holmes ever: There have been so many, and so many great ones. But it is certainly the right one for right now.

There is no easy explanation for why this Arthur Conan Doyle character has such a lasting hold on the public imagination; possibly only Dracula has had as many incarnations. And that may be a clue to the detective’s enduring popularity.

Vampires, after all, supposedly symbolize uncontrolled desire and repressed sexuality. It could be that more than almost any other sleuth, Sherlock Holmes represents logic and the unapologetic triumph of reason over emotion. And especially in this age of ambivalence and subjectivity, a purely cerebral hero is particularly welcome.

“Sherlock” stars Benedict Cumberbatch and was created by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss (“Doctor Who”), and they, of course, depict the hero as freakishly smart and oddly talented. This Sherlock is also lissome, spirited and briskly energetic; most important, the famous detective isn’t turned inside out to suit current, navel-gazing fashions.

Sherlock jokes about his chilly British upbringing with his older brother, Mycroft (played by Mr. Gatiss), but his psychic deprivations and sexual orientation go largely unexplored. When Sherlock tells Watson (Martin Freeman) “the game is on,” it’s an invitation to help him solve the case, not explore his innermost feelings. (Though it would be funny if Sherlock said it while turning on the World Cup finals.)

Particularly on television, it’s almost impossible to find another interesting crime solver who isn’t driven by childhood wounds or crippling psychological flaws or fixations. People are always trying to humanize Dracula; they too often try to do the same to Sherlock Holmes.

Image

Robert Downey Jr. in “Sherlock Holmes.”CreditWarner Bros. Pictures

“Elementary,” on CBS, is a case in point: It’s a New Age variation on the persona, positing a modern-day Holmes who is a recovering drug addict with daddy issues. His Watson is a doctor, played by Lucy Liu, who was hired by his father to serve as Holmes’s companion-watchdog.

“House,” the old Fox show that starred Hugh Laurie as a doctor, was also a reworking of Sherlock Holmes — and possibly a little of Dr. Joseph Bell, a surgeon who was Conan Doyle’s real-life model. The show reveled in House’s deductive diagnoses but couldn’t leave the hero’s cool superiority alone: House was physically handicapped and deep down a mess. By series end, he was cracking up more than he was cracking cases.

The flawed detective is so common that it’s become a television cliché. The heroes of “The Mentalist,” “The Following” and “True Detective” are almost as consumed by their own demons as they are by clues. (One noteworthy exception to that rule is a British show, “Above Suspicion,” created by Lynda La Plante, who was also responsible for “Prime Suspect”; it’s now available on Acorn.tv, an online channel that specializes in British series.)

PBS’s “Sherlock,” set in contemporary London, ingeniously converts 19th-century technology to today’s world of smartphones, blogs, surveillance cameras and GPS, without adopting the attendant self-absorption and psychobabble.

This Sherlock could be turned into a textbook psychiatric case, but the show allows him to be merely eccentric, bracingly tactless and haughtily free of introspection, though he does crave cocaine when bored and sometimes turns morose if he can’t figure out a clue. When people question his sang-froid, calling him a psychopath, Holmes corrects them by cheerfully describing himself as a “high-functioning sociopath.”

“Sherlock” is a huge hit in Britain — Season 3 drew more viewers there than “Downton Abbey” did — and it’s not hard to see why. Holmes has been translated into dozens of languages and has universal appeal, but he is, above all, a reassuring, even flattering figure to the British. He is the Englishman supreme, and, like “Downton Abbey,” an exemplar of a more confident, masterful age.

In Season 3, Sherlock’s emotional detachment is put to the highest test: He reunites with Watson after a two-year absence (he had his reasons), and then is best man at Watson’s wedding.

Sherlock expresses genuine friendship and even warmth (there are a few soppy moments, including one with Mycroft), but the show resists turning him into a basket case or, worse, a normal human being. The wedding episode is a gripping and even hilarious tour de force: Sherlock solves two crimes while delivering a long, serpentine wedding toast.

Image

Season 3 of “Sherlock” on PBS starts Sunday with Mr. Cumberbatch, left, as Holmes, and Martin Freeman as Watson.CreditRobert Viglasky/Hartswood Films for Masterpiece

The writers take fanciful liberties with Conan Doyle’s work, mixing together strands from different stories and often concocting whole new tangents. And, oddly enough, some of the more improbable elements in the books — like Moriarty, the archenemy who runs a vast criminal network — have more resonance in a post-Sept. 11 world.

The show’s verve is reminiscent of that of a 2005 BBC series, “ShakespeaRe-Told,” in which different directors retold classic plays in modern settings: The hero of “Macbeth” is an ambitious chef in a fancy three-star restaurant; in “Much Ado About Nothing,” Benedick and Beatrice are co-anchors of a news show in Wessex. Like those fractured Shakespeare tales, “Sherlock” is inventive and humorously far-fetched, but always in the spirit of the original work.

“The game is never over, John,” Sherlock sternly tells Watson at a rare, mournful moment of doubt. And that is a vow “Sherlock” intends to keep, at least for another season.

Correction:

The TV Watch column on Saturday, about the BBC show “Sherlock,” which has returned to PBS for a third season, rendered incorrectly the name of another television show on which one of the creators of “Sherlock,” Mark Gatiss, has appeared. It is “Doctor Who,” not “Dr. Who.”